A Dirty Little Secret of Time Management

We all (unless you are not from this planet) have at one stage or another wished be had more time. People are always too busy with not enough time. Me included.

We’re always looking for things to help us manage our time better and get on top of things.

But here’s a dirty little of time management that the time management gurus most fail to mention.

YOU CAN’T MANAGE TIME!!!

Yep, you heard me right. You can’t manage time. I mean, how’s that going for you so far? Still got 24hrs? Nothing’s changed there.

Here’s the nuance. What you can manage is your activities and specifically, your priority.

Notice I’m saying priority here, not priorities.

The real secret to activity management is to decide what’s the single most important activity to accomplish that day, and do that first. And only do anything else when that ONE Thing is done.

If you could only do one thing that day, what would it be?

And work on that until it’s done.

Everything else?

Well, that has to wait, or not get done at all?

Otherwise, what happens? The to-do list gets bigger and bigger. You get more and more overwhelmed and you are back in the same place the following day.

It’s hard to discipline ourselves to do that. I know. I’m in the same boat. I’m working on it. In fact, I’ve started to create a system (what I’m calling at the moment my Super Journal) which is a day to day planner that is helping. A few people are interested in it, so I’ll let anyone interested in beta testing it know when that stage is ready.

The Super Journal

But for now, remember, you can not manage time. It will flow regardless. You can only manage your activities. So decide on what’s MOST important and get that done. Anything else is a bonus.